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It’s birthday season. Actually, it’s birthDAY for Alan and Kate, which means little time for you, although here’s a fresh thread. I just finished frosting the cake, and from here on it’s a run-run day until we head to Ann Arbor for dinner. Wendy’s coming along, and will spend the short week with her friends at Kate’s co-op. She loves that place, because it’s pretty much petting and walks and treats nonstop; she sleeps for two days after coming home from these canine bacchanals.

We’ll have a relaxing weekend afterward; Kate will be recording her band, part of her senior thesis. Yes, senior thesis. Assuming all goes well, she graduates in April. Sunrise, sunset.

I have a like-hate relationship with e-scooters. How about you? I think this WashPost writer gets the gist:

Electric scooters are a little like Q-Tips .

In both cases, the products are marketed with explicit warnings about how not to use them, even though everyone knows that’s precisely the way pretty much every customer will use them.

For scooter riders here in Santa Monica, it means: Don’t you dare ride on the sidewalk, which is against the law, even though it sometimes feels super unsafe to ride next to cars. Or: Wink-wink, always wear a helmet. Also, the beach bike path is verboten, even though it is the smoothest, most fun, most scenic ride possible. And definitely don’t just dump your scooter in the middle of a busy path or sidewalk.

Aw shucks, well, we did warn you. Guess it’s your fault if you land in the ER.

I always think the best columns are those that don’t tell you what you already know or flatter your existing prejudices (Mr. Albom’s territory), or even those that make you think of something you hadn’t before (which is still a pretty good column), but those that make you think YES THIS IS EXACTLY IT and it’s something that was right in front of you all the time. Like those 3D puzzles where you have to find the dolphin in the pattern. You let your eyes swim out of focus, and then the dolphin is right there.

On Monday, this photo surfaced online (under the hashtag #BarabooProud) and immediately went viral. The photographer later maintained he’d merely asked the boys to wave, though the gesture didn’t resemble a wave made by any hand-possessing human. In response to an outpouring of outrage, the superintendent issued a statement: “We want to be very clear. The Baraboo School District is a hate-free environment.”

If this response sounds familiar, it’s because it echoes the bland assurances recited by officials whenever poison bubbles up in America.

…So, to the Baraboo superintendent: If your defense is, “We’re a hate-free environment,” but there’s a photo of 60 of your students Sieg Heil-ing on the steps of the county courthouse, then maybe you should consider the possibility that you are, in fact, a hate-filled environment.

Maybe it hit home because it has happened a few times around here, particularly before kids realized that social media is not a private affair. There were some kids who wrote “I (heart) n*ggers” on their bodies, took pictures and sent them around, then seemed amazed that they ended up on the 6 o’clock news. There was another closer to the 2016 campaign, where they shot video of themselves being racist.

Here, as in Baraboo, the reaction was exactly the same: This isn’t who we are! And, to be sure, it isn’t who most people are, at least not out loud and in public. However, anyone who denies the casual racism that percolates in suburban and rural communities — hell, in pretty much all communities — isn’t paying attention.

I think a lot of people would like to believe they live in a hate-free environment simply because they won’t let their children drop n-bombs at the dinner table, but as Hesse says, when 60 kids will sieg heil on command, either you’re not teaching them what it means, or, option B, they think it’s no big deal.

California is burning, and the president is doing everything wrong. Was there a bigger story to emerge from this weekend? No? Didn’t think so.

Honestly, I can’t say “it can’t get any worse,” because obviously it can, but seriously, a president who can screw up one of the easiest parts of the job? Nothing is out of reach of that. I mean: You show up, you look solemn, you put your hand over your heart, you walk to this mark and that mark, you pose for photos. What you don’t do: Cancel for some transparently bullshit reason, then sit in your hotel room tweeting about California. AND NOT EVEN THE RIGHT THING ABOUT CALIFORNIA. Again, this is the easy stuff: Our thoughts and prayers are with all in harm’s way in California, for instant, or Stay safe, and federal resources will be available for you to rebuild. What the hell EVER.

I spent more time than I probably should checking the lines on the crazier Twitter and Facebook accounts I monitor, and no one was taking his side in this. It’s just…crickets.

Sigh. I ask you.

Not much to report from the weekend. We spent almost all day trying to get a bifold door back on its track, and no, I’m not kidding. In and around that — grocery, gym, laundry, dry cleaner and a Robert Mitchum movie on FilmStruck, which we just discovered and is now, we were dismayed to learn, is going dark at the end of the month. This is a streaming service that has all of the Criterion Collection stuff on it, as well as every classic Hollywood movie you can think of, but away it goes.

This just in: Robert Mitchum in his prime was supremely hittable, if you know what I mean.

And now I am tired and would like to read a book and forget about you-know-who for a while. An old Martin Cruz Smith title might be just the ticket. Happy Monday, all.

Woke up to the pitter-patter of rain on the skylight, which I expected, no biggie. I stumbled to the bathroom, put on my workout clothes and filled my water bottle, stumbling out the door to — snow. The rain was the dreaded “wintry mix,” that fat, plopping precipitation that comes at the beginning and end of the season and basically sucks, although at least it’s not too cold when it’s wintry-mixing outside.

Did the 6 a.m. boxing workout, taking a few breaks to work the mitts with the trainer. Smug level: Orange.

Hey, with winter bearing down on us, we take our little rewards where we can — flannel sheets, hearty soups, red wine with friends, online shopping for the holidays. I came home to see a news alert on Alan’s phone, about police responding to another active shooter. A bit later, a correction: Not a mass shooting, a malfunctioning water heater. Well, there’s a relief. I guess we’re all on edge after yesterday’s slaughter in Thousand Oaks, with the revolting detail that some of the people in the bar — some of the people who died — were survivors of the Las Vegas slaughter last fall. We are insane in this stupid country.

I have to go out in the wintry mix later today to attend a seminar on marijuana legalization, so I’m keeping my head light this morning. Did a little scanning for gift ideas, and fell headfirst into the weird world of startup underwear — you know, the MeUndies, Tommy John, all those brands that advertise on podcasts and have their noses in the air because they’re startups, and hence superior to Hanes and what-have-you.. And excuse me for saying this, but: The day I pay $35 for a pair of everyday u-trou is the day I hit the goddamn lottery, and probably not even then. I don’t doubt that it’s got amazingly soft microfiber whatever-the-hell fabric, and I’m sure it fits very well, but it’s underwear. If I’m going to pay that much, I want it to be lingerie, dammit. For just wearing under a pair of jeans, I’m going with something I can buy in a three-pack at Target.

Other mysteries: $200-a-pair blue jeans. Yes, yes, it’s selvage denim, supposedly superior to all other denims. Selvage, it turns out, is basically “self-edge,” and what that means is, the weave is different and it will only fray in two directions, instead of all four. Good to know! I generally expect my jeans not to fray at all — the worst money I ever spent was for a pair of “distressed” Levi’s, which have holes in the legs and can only be worn for a brief window in spring and fall, when it’s cool enough for jeans but not so cold you can’t wear the air-conditioned kind.

Anyway, jeans are one of those things that really rewards brand loyalty. You find the one that works on your bod, and you buy it forever. I’ve got a Levi’s ass, and Levi’s are my jeans jam, and I’m just grateful they don’t cost $200 a pair. You need to know what fits you, because jeans really are almost like, well, underwear.

Enough ranting about shopping. On to the bloggage.

Sarah Sanders is a lying liar, but you already knew that. That intern looks like a Sarah-in-training. Good luck, girlfriend, but I’d advise you to jump off this train at the first opportunity.

Mostly for Detroiters, but the issues are probably universal in contemporary urban America: An interview with the keeper of the Terrible Ilitches Facebook page. The Ilitches are a local billionaire family, owners of the Tigers and Red Wings, and adept at getting the city to subsidize their developments with tax money, promising payoffs that never come to pass.

I’m reading through last night’s comments now, and I sense a note of gloom among the commentariat. I feel none of it. If the current political situation alarms you, consider that important victories were won last night, and it’s a step forward to reclaiming whatever we mean by “this country.”

Michigan had a one-state blue/pink wave, electing all Democrats (and all women) as governor, secretary of state and attorney general, as well as brooming two GOP congressmen, replacing them with Democratic women. The state legislature will no longer be in charge of drawing congressional and state legislative districts, turning the job over to a bipartisan commission. And hey, we also legalized marijuana. Recreational marijuana.

So if you’re a Democrat, there was a lot to smile about last night, at least around here. If you think it sucked to see Stacey Abrams go down, to see Beto O’Rourke and Andrew Gillum go down, I understand. But as smarter people than I have said more than once: Donald Trump is not a cause, he’s a symptom. All the terrible things he represents — nativism, prejudice, heedless unconcern for the future in favor of now-now-now and me-me-me — is deep-rooted in the American psyche. Wall Street rewards quarterly numbers, not long-term planning. When I am tempted to despair — and despair is a sin, as good Catholics know — I look at a photo of our president and consider what it reveals:

He’s old. He’s insecure. He takes terrible care of himself, physically and mentally. He’s a tar baby of misery, who contaminates everything he touches. He hasn’t read a book in decades. I doubt he’s thought deeply about the nature of his life, his soul, even his family, in his whole life. When he goes down — and he will, because nothing lasts forever — he will take so much with him, so many things that have stuck to his tarry body. I expect Ivanka will be the last into the pit, hair flying, stilettos digging into the dirt on the rim of the hole. “Moderating influennnnnce” will be the last thing we hear from her.

I have hope, slim hope, for the future, because I have to. I’m starting to see Trumpism as the flame-out of supernova, that will eventually shrink down to a cold rock.

I hope.

I haven’t lived here all that long, but I see a theme in Michigan’s election: Don’t overreach. We passed an anti-gerrymandering measure in part because in the last redistricting, when Republicans controlled Lansing, they turned a purple state into one that, legislatively, looked more like Indiana, with four Democrats and 10 Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives. (Along with two Democratic senators. Because statewide elections? Purple. And now, after this election? It’s 7-7. Purple.) A lawsuit filed over the current district lines turned up emails between Republican legislators and their consultants, talking about “cramming Dem garbage” into one district, to “raise a middle finger” to a long-time congressman. Another successful ballot proposal, on voting rights, put straight-ticket voting into the state constitution. One-click (or one box, filled in) straight-party voting has been studied again and again, and shown to primarily advantage Democrats. In a practical sense, it helps cities like Detroit, which has lots of Democrats and terrible election procedure, by keeping lines moving in polling places. (We’re a long-ballot state. Really long.) But the GOP has tried to kill it again and again, in the name of “encouraging more informed voting,” etc. It passed by a wide margin.

It’s often pointed out that when Democrats were in power, they did the same thing, aggressively protecting their interests, and they did. But this year, the answer to overreaching was to take the dish off the table entirely. I can’t help but see this as a move forward.

In elected offices, the new AG is a woman who fought the same-sex marriage decision all the way to the Supreme Court, and won. The unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate was the AG who fought her every step of the way, invoking a 2004 election that put a SSM ban in the state constitution, as proof that Michigan simply didn’t want this to happen, with no acknowledgement of the politicking behind that move (it was a Karl Rove strategy to boost turnout for Dubya, imperiled that year), the way society had changed its attitudes, none of it. He overreached. The new secretary of state is an advocate of political reform; her opponent feared same-day registration would encourage voter fraud, an issue that simply doesn’t exist on a wide scale in the U.S.

Pendulums swing, but the lessons stay the same: Remember who you work for. Don’t put party over people. And don’t overreach. It’s a cautionary tale for, yes, BOTH SIDES.

I don’t think happy days are here again. I think a lot of pain lies ahead. But I believe this was an important election that revealed a lot to be hopeful about.

So, a little bloggage:

Sorry about the ads, the exploding pop-ups, all of it, but this column by Neil Steinberg echoes a lot of what I feel about you-know-who, and brings in the Great American Novel in the bargain. Worth the ads.

When I was in junior high, I read a novel with a theme of anti-Semitism. It was honestly hard to wrap my head around; it seemed such a weird prejudice to have. As we know, it’s back in a big way, and it was incredibly blatant in the latest campaign. Just in case you have to be reminded what you’re fighting for.

Yeesh, it’s almost over. I think now is the time to remind everyone — because this campaign has been SO long and SO heated — that campaigning is not governing.

I’ve read a lot in recent weeks about young people and how they’re getting into working on campaigns, having their voices heard, all that. You surely read this thing that flew around last week, about the youngsters who aren’t voting because they can’t figure out which corner of the absentee ballot the stamp goes on, or whatever. A few of them say something I’ve heard from a couple of Kate’s friends — that they’re not “inspired” by the candidates. I want to tell them — I do tell them — that inspirational politicians come along once or twice in a lifetime, that they were lucky to have Barack Obama as the president they came of age to, but also cursed, because brother, that guy was a unicorn. And even he disappointed people, because? Campaigning is not governing. He did what he could with what he had, he made mistakes, he had terrible people willing to do awful things to hold him back, but he still passed significant legislation. When the history of our era is written, surely Obamacare will be seen as the first, tentative step toward single-payer. That’s something.

I guess what I’m saying is, if the campaign is the heady early days of a relationship, the time after the oath of office is taken is when your partner starts farting in bed. S/he’s the same person you fell for, just…different.

So, fingers crossed. In 48 hours much more will be apparent. Hang in there.

Another work-hard weekend, and now I can’t even remember what we did. Oh, right — Costco, Kroger, dry cleaner, library, leaves, lawn, all that shit. In between, watched “Isle of Dogs” and four episodes of “The Haunting of Hill House,” both of which were enjoyable, although “enjoyable” is maybe not the word for the latter. Skillfully done, maybe. I saw the first HoHH, c. 1963, and it scared the crap out of me. Didn’t see the second adaptation; all I know about it is, Catherine Zeta-Jones played a beautiful lesbian in a furry vest. The TV version kept the beautiful lesbian and dropped the furry vest, and it’s more of a story about grief and loss, but it works.

Of “Isle of Dogs” I can only say that Wendy has been speaking Japanese to me all day.

As we lurch into the bloggage, I have to start with two of my own — a visit to Janet’s Closet, a Metro Detroit store for trans women and cross-dressers. And this column, about my experience taking mass transit this summer. Feedback welcome.

But on to the good stuff! How many of you are familiar with Jordan Peterson? I had a bad feeling about the guy when I heard about all the young conservative men who were flocking to see him, because he was helping them Become Men. I also heard one of his rules for life is to clean up your room, which is honestly hilarious, because I assume most of these guys had mothers who probably told them the same thing about a million times. Well, as they say: When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. I couldn’t get through any of his writing, myself — contemporary philosophy isn’t my game, folks — and the stories about him seemed to single out his nuttiest ideas, like that women are somehow cheating by wearing makeup in the workplace, because something something “the flush of orgasm,” or some bullshit.

But the latest I heard is that he went on an all-beef diet, on the recommendation of his untrained but self-styled nutrition expert daughter, and it fixed everything that was wrong with him, except maybe his dumb ideas about makeup. And by all beef, I mean ALL beef, plus water. I mean beef for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks and nothing else. But just to get an idea of what we’re dealing with here, enjoy this passage from a recent Atlantic story on the beef diet, quoting Peterson. I’m suspending my usual three-paragraph rule so you an enjoy this anecdote, beginning to end:

“Both (Peterson’s daughter) Mikhaila and I noticed that when we restricted our diet and then ate something we weren’t supposed to, the reaction was absolutely catastrophic.” He gives the example of having had some apple cider and subsequently being incapacitated for a month by what he believes was an inflammatory response.

“You were done for a month?”

“Oh yeah, it took me out for a month. It was awful …”

“Apple cider? What was it doing to you?”

“It produced an overwhelming sense of impending doom. I seriously mean overwhelming. There’s no way I could’ve lived like that. But see, Mikhaila knew by then that it would probably only last a month.”

“A month? From fucking cider?”

“I didn’t sleep that month for 25 days. I didn’t sleep at all for 25 days.”

“What? How is that possible?”

“I’ll tell you how it’s possible: You lay in bed frozen in something approximating terror for eight hours. And then you get up.”

The longest recorded stretch of sleeplessness in a human is 11 days, witnessed by a Stanford research team.

I remind you, for maybe the dozenth time, that the people who follow Peterson’s philosophy are fond of calling the rest of us snowflakes.

Believe it or not — and I had a hard time believing it myself — I saw David Brooks speak yesterday, and I enjoyed it.

One of the organizations I work for, the policy group, wrapped its pre-election work, and yesterday was an uncharacteristically light day. So I decamped for the CityLab conference downtown. There wasn’t much news being made, but the speakers moved through quickly and some were interesting, and then, whaddaya know, here’s David Brooks, and he’s talking about mending the social fabric.

Apparently he’s joined the Aspen Institute as some sort of adjunct, and his initiative is called Weave — get it? Fabric? — and he gave the 20-minute version of his speech about it. There were a lot of impossible-to-verify statistics (35 percent of Americans are lonely), and some heartwarming anecdotes about communities coming together to lift up children, but at the end, you couldn’t help but think: Mensch. I mean, yeah, you can pick it apart and think we need a truth and reconciliation commission before we can start weaving, or whatever. But on a Monday afternoon, after a gruesome week? I was happy to let it wash over me.

Maybe a balm of bullshit. But it beat the alternative, i.e., reality.

So, a few items of bloggage today:

When I heard Whitey Bulger was dead in prison at 89, of course I figured he’d had a heart attack or stroke or something. Nope, a beatdown. Mercy. What does it take to kill at 89 year old man? I wouldn’t think much. Tough old bastard to last that long in the first place.

Two women from Detroit were raped in a Jamaican resort last month. Today, the reporter who wrote the story in the Freep followed it up with a piece on how often that happens in Jamaica, even in gated, all-inclusive resorts, where guests presumably feel safe. A terrifying story that I’d consider if I were planning a Caribbean vacation.

Well, friends, no two ways about it: We just came through a shit-tastic week, and there’s every chance next week will be equally shit-tastic. I was looking at an inside page in the NYT this morning, and there was a story about one homicidal maniac above the fold, and another below, both with headshots, and they even looked alike. They’re blurring together, the homicidal maniacs who are absolutely, positively not motivated by our president at ALL. Just ask any prominent conservative. The guy in Pittsburgh actually disliked Trump:

Because we are obliged by the sickness of our political culture to analyze every despicable event in a manner designed to confirm our priors, we have already, mere hours after the barbarity, sunk into a nauseating discussion about how much blame to assign to the president for this unspeakable act. The obvious answer is: None. Donald Trump should be assigned no such blame, even if the shooter were the president of the Donald Trump Fan Club, because he pulled no trigger and committed no crime. Period. To do that, to assign blame, is to whitewash the crime itself and the criminal’s responsibility for it. He becomes a cultural robot, seized by an evil collective unconscious that drove him to his crimes.

Remind me of this the next time someone claims Barack Obama is the godfather of ISIS, OK?

Blech. What an awful weekend. We went to a costume party at the end of it. The topical costume of the night was an easy one for middle-aged men — Brett Kavanaugh. Needed: A black robe, a Yale baseball cap and a calendar with BEACH WEEK blocked out. Not bad, although I think this pic, which I found on Facebook, might win the whole holiday:

Alan and I went as devils. We were devils the last year we went to a Halloween party. Horns, simple eye masks, demonic attire — Alan in nothing pants and shirt, me in a tight red dress with black gloves and seamed stockings. Also bright red lips, because that’s a demonic color. I put a spell on you…because you’re mine.

Ultimately, as bad as things have been lately, I’m trying to shrug off the worst of it, and just concentrate on Nov. 6. And the election after that, and the one after that, and so on. It won’t be easy, but it’ll be worth it.

I was tired last night and thought I’d blog this morning. Thought I’d have a few minutes early. I didn’t. Then the pipe bombs began turning up, and game over for the blog.

Because I haven’t had enough misery today, I’m watching the televised Michigan gubernatorial debate and want to open a vein. No, an artery. A big one. Eight, nine good spurts and then vision would start to fade and I’d be out of my misery. Remember when debates were actual arguments? These are contests in who can come up with the most bumper-sticker phrases and put them into a Vitamix, pouring out smoothies on command.

Tom and Lorenzo pointed out an amazing fact today: Kate Middleton, aka the Duchess of Cambridge, aka Cathy Cambridge, is now as old as Princess Diana was when she died. Damn, they’re right — where does the time go? Pretty sure the tiara in that pic is the one Diana was married in.

And now if you go to one of my shows, it’s large groups of women, oftentimes in homemade matching Stormy shirts. They are loud, and they’re angry. They’re like, “Fuck Trump.” Or they’re crying. I’m like, “Jesus Christ.

There’s no crying in tittie bars. What’s happening?” People are grabbing me and giving me money, and then later they’re sharing their personal stories — women are saying, “I was molested or I was raped, and you’ve given me the inspiration to file charges against my boss.” Just heavy, heavy shit every night.

“We hope for better things” is part of Detroit’s motto. Let’s all think that before someone gets killed.

Today I coped with Oncoming Election Stress Syndrome by clearing off a pile of crap on my desk. Renewed our auto registration, paid the cable bill, made some lists, dusted and vacuumed the second floor. I was feeling pretty good. Then I read the Axios newsletter for Sunday and headed back to a full boil:

Trump told reporters in Nevada yesterday that he and House Republican leaders are working “around the clock” on “a very major tax cut for middle-income people. And if we do that, it’ll be sometime just prior, I would say, to November.” But Republicans on the Hill seemed to know nothing about it, and both chambers are out until after midterms.

There’s also the non-existent dissolve-the-borders bill that he keeps claiming Democrats are ready to drop, and the number of jobs tied to the Saudi arms deal has now been bloated to more than half a million.

I’m not the world’s biggest Frank Bruni fan, but he certainly hit the nail on the head with this column:

Trump enjoys a kind and degree of immunity that few if any politicians in my lifetime have been given. His own exhaustively established indecency inoculates him. As a result, all manner of ugliness slips by — unnoticed, barely noticed or noticed and accepted as Trump being Trump.

And so back I go to the little tasks that keep me sane. Next will be closets, and the bathrooms could use a scrub. Just a couple more weeks.

We’ve been having a macabre little local story unfolding here in Detroit of late. First was the discovery of a funeral home that wasn’t finishing the job, so to speak, and had mold-covered bodies stacked in a garage and a number of fetal remains stuffed behind a false ceiling. This was called the classic One Bad Apple case, until police, acting on a tip, raided another funeral home and found something like 63 more fetuses in freezers and boxes.

I’m pretty flummoxed by this one. I have one authoritative source about the funeral industry, and he doesn’t get it, either. Most mortuaries and crematoriums will handle fetal remains and stillbirths at low or no cost, and funerary services are offered to all women who miscarry. This latter case is apparently tied up with couples who thought they were donating their infant/fetal remains to scientific research. But man, what a creepy story.

Is anyone else a little leery of balconies? Balconies, cantilevered walkways and other flat surfaces with sketchy means of support? Yes? Good, then you should know we’re justified in our caution — an actual floor collapsed during a dance party in South Carolina this weekend.

And with that, have we had enough Halloween-y frights and freakouts to start the week? Yes? Then let’s do so. Because we all have work to do.

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Welcome.

This is my personal website. I used to say it wasn’t a blog, but I can’t say that anymore, can I? I still think of it as a one-sided few minutes over coffee that we can have every morning. Comments welcome; first-timers go to moderation, but after that, the door’s left unlocked.

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